


Not How It Was Supposed To Be

by izazov



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Inspired by Fanart, M/M, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers-centric, pre-Siege
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 13:00:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11898261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izazov/pseuds/izazov
Summary: Steve comes back and the world is an even bigger mess than it was.





	Not How It Was Supposed To Be

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Cap IM Tiny RB Round 7 and inspired by [The goodbye never wanted](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11743869) by ranoutofrun

Steve comes back and the world is an even bigger mess than it was.

It doesn’t take long for him to realize everyone is looking at him with hope, expecting him to clean it up.

Steve understands duty and obligations. Understands honor and sacrifice.

Knows the value of sacrifice.

He is also goddamned tired of shouldering the weight of the entire world.

It used to be easier. Fighting the good fight.

But that was before he fought a war against an enemy who wore the face of one of the most important persons in the world to Steve.

Steve can no longer tell who, in the end, came out the winner.

He is starting to suspect it might be Norman Osborn.

***

Bucky is now Captain America.

Steve very carefully avoids thinking about a letter he wrote in what now seems another lifetime.

He avoids thinking about Tony altogether.

Well. Tries to, anyway.

He doesn’t have a lot of success. Or any at all.

Nothing new there.

Tony goddamned Stark is nowhere to be found, and right under Steve’s skin. 

Like a poison he cannot flush from his bloodstream.

 _It wasn’t supposed to be like this_ , he thinks, foolish and futile.

 _But this is how it is_ , he thinks, bitterly.

***

Steve avoids sleep.

He wants to say it is because he feels unmoored, like his foothold in this reality is tenuous and he might slip at any moment, lost to his past and Red Skull’s tenacity. 

And it is.

But not the whole of it

He is afraid of his dreams.

In his dreams he doesn’t hesitate, in his dreams there are no hands dragging him off Tony’s prone body, lying beaten and bloody and helpless on the ground.

In his dreams, Steve brings the shield down. Again and again and _again_.

He wakes covered in sweat and panting. He feels sick.

He all but trips over his own feet in his haste to get to the shower. To wash the blood he cannot see off his hands, his body, his face.

He turns the knob on the shower until the water running down his body is near scalding.

He shuts his eyes and leans his forehead against the tiles.

It takes forever until Steve stops shivering.

He doesn’t go back to sleep, afterwards.

***

Maybe he is going about it the wrong way.

It’s not like avoiding to think about Tony is doing him much good.

Except trap him in a vicious circle where anger and guilt and loss and betrayal are clawing at his insides.

But everyone is so damn careful about not mentioning Tony.

It is like he was never one of them.

Steve doesn’t know why it is bothering him.

Tony is the one who turned his back on them. Who chose to hunt them down.

The one who should be here to help the mess he’d help make.

“Anyone has any new intel on Stark?” Steve asks one day. He doesn’t slip on the name. His voice doesn’t waver. He tastes bile in the back of his throat.

The entire room goes quiet. They all look at him with varying degrees of weariness.

“We have bigger problems to worry about than what’s up with Stark.” It’s Luke Cage who finally answers. “He’s not important.”

 _But he is_ , Steve thinks, stupidly, helplessly, _he is important to me_.

And that is the heart of the matter. The truth Steve didn’t want to acknowledge.

Hidden beneath the anger and bitterness, beneath the ugliness of what they have done to each other, locked away but not silenced: Steve wants Tony back.

Steve _misses_ him.

***

“Steve,” Bucky says. He looks grim, weary. They are in an abandoned warehouse. Steve doesn’t know why. “There is someone you need to see.”

Then, Bucky is turning, stepping aside and Steve is looking at Maria Hill appearing from the shadows.

“Hi, Steve,” she says, coolly. “You look well for a dead guy.”

Anger ignites low in Steve’s gut, and he is gritting his teeth, his hands are curling into fists. He is not aware he is moving forward until he is stopped by a hand pressing against his sternum, holding him back.

“Just hear her out, Steve,” Bucky says. “Then you can tell her to shove it if that’s what you want.”

Steve trusts Bucky. He doesn’t trust Maria Hill. He remembers vividly how this entire mess began, months ago, on the deck of SHIELD’s Hellicarrier.

But the situation is different now. It is written in the lines of tension on Hill’s face. In the 

Steve forces himself to relax. Clamps down on the anger churning right under his skin. He takes a step back, folds his hands across his chest. “What makes you think I would be interested in anything you have to say?”

“Two words, Rogers,” Maria says. She doesn’t look perturbed by Steve’s hostility. She looks weary. “Tony Stark.”

Just like that, Steve’s anger fizzles out. And then there is only the feeling of something sharp and aching twisting in the hollow of Steve’s chest.

It strongly resembles hope.

***

Persistent vegetative state.

The words echo inside Steve’s skull long after Maria’s departure.

Steve tries to wrap his mind around the fact that Tony had effectively deleted his own mind. Tries to accept that all that brilliance, ingenuity, wit are all gone. Deliberately erased. 

_He’d killed himself without actually committing suicide_ , Steve thinks and almost chokes on the anger that burns inside his throat.

He doesn’t know why he is surprised.

When it comes down to it, Tony Stark’s favourite sacrificial lamb has always been Tony Stark.

***

Steve watches the projection of Tony. His entire body vibrating with pure, undiluted fury.

He stands there, in that crummy motel room, surrounded by familiar faces, seeing only Tony’s.

Listens to Tony gloss over the fucking war they fought against each other without so much as a hint of regret and shame.

Listens to Tony telling them to make a choice. About his life. As if there is a choice to be made. As if they would ever-

Red seeps into Steve’s vision. He bites the inside of his cheek until he feels copper on his tongue. 

He does his best not to look at the other Tony. The one lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines that are keeping him alive.

The shell he’d made himself into to try and fix his mistakes.

This isn’t what Steve wanted. Not even that vicious, angry and wounded part of him that still bleeds poison at Tony’s betrayal.

When the record ends, the silence in the room is stifling. Suffocating.

Everyone is looking at him.

Steve knows what they are waiting for.

They want Steve to decide.

He says yes. Of course he says yes.

He wants Tony back.

Wants a chance to talk. To listen. To mend.

He wants.

He _wants_.

***

Steve stares at the walls. At the red leather of his gloves as his fingers flex and curl.

He waits. Measures the minutes ticking away by the carefully controlled way his chest rises and falls.

Breathe in, breathe out.

In. Out. In. Out.

Again and again and again.

He tries to envision what will happen when Tony wakes up.

From talking things through to awkward silence to an outright fight.

He never imagines the procedure will fail.

***

“Dead,” Steve says. The word leaves his throat a flat, emotionless sound. 

He thinks he should be feeling something. But there is only ice, crawling up his chest and inside his throat.

Doctor is still speaking. Talking about heart failure. Steve tunes it out.

It makes no sense. Tony’s heart was fine. Extremis made sure of it.

Nothing makes sense.

There is a murmur of voices all around him. Someone is crying. The sound of door opening and closing. Steve tunes it all out.

He thinks he should do something. Say something.

But there is nothing. Just a sole thought, replaying over and over and over again inside his head. Useless and foolish.

_It wasn’t supposed to be like this._

Tony was supposed to wake up. They were supposed to talk. Steve was supposed to listen this time, he was supposed to try and understand, and Tony was-- Tony was-

Tony is dead.

Tony is _dead_. 

***

No one objects when Steve demands to be left alone with Tony.

_There is no Tony. That’s just a body. He’s gone, he’s no-_

Steve silences that voice, takes a deep breath and dips a piece of cloth into the washbasin, dabs at the streak of dark, viscous liquid oozing from the corner of Tony’s mouth.

 _Extremis_ , he thinks. Something vicious and mad with fury claws at the inside of his chest at the name. Steve cuts off that train of thought before it gains ground - before it swallows him whole - and focuses on the task at hand.

He is slow and methodical as he wipes clean Tony’s face, his neck, and chest until there is not a speck of that goddamned sludge anywhere on Tony’s body.

Just Tony.

“There you are,” he whispers, drags his thumb along Tony’s cheek and jaw, slides it down to Tony’s neck where there should be a pulse and finds-

Nothing. 

Something snaps inside Steve. And then there is nothing but anguish and desperate, helpless denial shredding his heart into bloody ribbons.

Steve cradles Tony’s head with one hand, splays the other against Tony’s abdomen. He is crying, his tears soaking his cowl.

“Goddamn you, Tony,” he says, wretched and miserable and lost. “Goddamn you.”

He curses and yells, then sobs those words against Tony’s still chest.

Over and over and over again. Until his throat hurts and every word feels like a jagged shard of glass.

He doesn’t say _was it worth it_ , or _I miss you_ , or _come back to me, Shellhead_.

Steve doesn’t say _I love you_.

There is no point. Tony can no longer hear it.


End file.
